April 28, 2025 • 51 mins
Timothy Swords-executive coach, certified mindfulness teacher, principal of Mindful Leadership Executive Coaching.
With decades as a financial services executive, CFO & management consultant with rigorous mindfulness training - incl. 2,000+ hours of meditation practice & study under world renowned teachers - he delivers a values-driven approach enabling executives, business owners & senior leaders to cultivate self-awareness, emotional resilience, & authenticity to lead with clarity & purpose.
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With decades as a financial services executive, CFO & management consultant with rigorous mindfulness training - incl. 2,000+ hours of meditation practice & study under world renowned teachers - he delivers a values-driven approach enabling executives, business owners & senior leaders to cultivate self-awareness, emotional resilience, & authenticity to lead with clarity & purpose.
Winning Business Radio is broadcast live Mondays at 4PM ET and Music on W4CY Radio (www.w4cy.com) part of Talk 4 Radio (www.talk4radio.com) on the Talk 4 Media Network (www.talk4media.com). Winning Business Radio is viewed on Talk 4 TV (www.talk4tv.com).
Winning Business Radio Podcast is also available on Talk 4 Media (www.talk4media.com), Talk 4 Podcasting (www.talk4podcasting.com), iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, Pandora, Spotify, Audible, and over 100 other podcast outlets.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/winning-business-radio--3075598/support.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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(00:21):
W FOURCY Radio.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Churchill said, those who fail to learn from history are
condemned to repeat it. Kevin Helenan believes that certainly applies
to business. Welcome to Winning Business Radio here at W
four CY Radio. That's W four cy dot com and
now your host, Kevin Helena.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
Thanks everybody for joining again today. I am Kevin Hallanan
and welcome back to Winning Business TV and Radio on
W four cy dot com. We're streaming live on Talk
four tv dot com. In addition, we're on Facebook, and
that's live on Facebook at Winning Business Radio. And after
the live show, you're going to see us on all
those platforms where you get your favorite podcasts. YouTube, iHeartRadio, Spotify, Apple,
(01:17):
et cetera, et cetera. The mission of Winning Business radio
and TV, as regular viewers and listeners know, is to
offer insights and advice, to help people avoid the mistakes
of others, to learn best practices, the how tos, the
what to's, the what not tos, and to be challenged,
and I believe, hopefully to be inspired by the successes
(01:37):
of others. Those are consultants, coaches, advisors, authors, founders and
owners and entrepreneurs, people with expertise. But interestingly, every virtual
excuse me, virtually every successful person I've ever talked to
has had some form of failure in their lives and careers.
So while we all have to get our knee skin
once in a while, I say it every week. I'm
driven to keep those scrapes from needing major surgery. Let's
(02:00):
endeavor to learn from history so we don't repeat it.
I've spent the better part of my career equipping businesses
to grow from solopreneurs to small and medium sized companies
all the way up to the fortune fifty. I've seen
some of those companies win into varying degrees. I've seen
some fail I've had the opportunity to rub elbows with
some of the highest performing people around and with some
who probably should have found other professions. In my own businesses,
(02:23):
I've had lots of success, but some failures too, and
I like to think I've learned a lot from those experiences.
So yeah, you'll hear from me my opinions and insights,
but more importantly, you're going to hear from experts, coaches, advisors, etc.
And today is no exception. Timothy Sword's executive coach, certified
mindfulness teacher, and principle of Mindful Leadership Executive Coaching.
Speaker 4 (02:44):
Here's his bio.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
Timothy recently transitioned his consultant practice to a new mindfulness
meditation practice. As of twenty twenty four, Timothy is an
executive coach and certified mindfulness teacher as principal of Hello
Mindful Leadership Executive Coaching. He utilizes his decades of experience
as a financial services executive CFO and management consultant with
(03:07):
rigorous mindfulness training, including more than two thousand hours of
meditation practice and study under world renowned teachers including Jack Cornfield,
Sharon Salzburg, Joe cabot Zen, and Trudy Goodman. The end
result is a bespoke, values driven approach that enables executives,
business owners, and senior leaders to cultivate a self awareness,
emotional resilience, and authenticity to lead with clarity and purpose.
(03:32):
Working in person and virtually, Timothy has worked with clients
in the San Francisco Bay area, as well as with
executives in Boston, Chicago, Houston, New York, and Phoenix. Drawing
on his experience as a senior executive with Fidelity Investments, PwC, AN, MUFG,
Union Bank, and consultants to clients including Merck Lam Research
(03:52):
in Cisco, he combines traditional corporate executive coaching methodologies with
scientifically proven mindfulness practice. This highly effective approach helps clients
navigate the complexities of leadership with greater clarity, confidence, and purpose.
Beyond teaching mindfulness meditations and techniques, Timothy touts the science
behind mindfulness and mindfulness practice and helping practitioners make lasting
(04:15):
change both behaviorally in this and in the both behaviorally
excuse me, and in the psychology of one's brain. That
science is backed up and we'll hear about it by
researchers at Harvard Medical School, Mass General Hospital, and numerous
other institutions. Timothy holds a BS in Accounting from Boston College,
a Harvard MBA, and a graduate certificate in Executive Coaching
(04:35):
from William James University. Timothy, Welcome to Winning Business Radio.
Speaker 5 (04:40):
Thank you, Kevin. Great to be here.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
Yeah, it's good to have you. I appreciate it. I
know that you're busy and appreciate you taking some time up.
So a little bit of background. Where'd you grow up?
Speaker 5 (04:49):
I grew up on Long Island, about forty five minute
Shane Rye from Manhattan, Okay.
Speaker 4 (04:56):
And what was it like to grow up there? Was
it rural? Was it city?
Speaker 5 (05:01):
Was it suburb I'm definitely a suburban boy. It was
definitely suburbia. It was fantastic growing up there. It was
about a fifteen minute drive from the Atlantic Ocean. So
swimming and surfing, which is kind of where my little
logo is derived from. You can't stop the waves, but
it can be enjoyed to surf them. And you know,
(05:25):
if you know how to surf the emotions of your
own mind. That's right. We'll get into that a little
bit now. Growing up there was great. It was a
very well resourced public school system. I went to so
you know, I ran track, I played soccer. I played
the French horn. You got all the uniforms.
Speaker 4 (05:43):
Nice, nice.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
I played trumpet and played. I played one year of football,
but I played the trumpet. That was second grade. I
think I still play all right. From there, though, you
made your way to Boston to attend Boston College. What
was behind that decision?
Speaker 5 (06:00):
Well, I had wanted to study accounting, study business. I
had studied a little bit of it before going there.
And I was the first one, at least on my
father's side of family, which is the side of family
and do the best. No one had been in business
(06:20):
for generations. They were ministers and missionaries, maures and so forth.
And when I started sing accounting, it was like this
window into the business world. I had started working when
I was twelve to start saving money for college, and wow,
so I started running my own little business as a kid.
Speaker 4 (06:36):
But what was the business.
Speaker 5 (06:39):
Well, I had a paper route, I had a I
worked at a beach club doing things like that. But
I also wanted a liberal arts education. So that's how
I got to Boston College.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
And the timing is probably doesn't worry as much, But
when did you get your MBM.
Speaker 4 (06:57):
Why did you decide to go do that? Yeah?
Speaker 5 (07:00):
Gotcha. Yeah. So I I was at I graduate BC,
I went into a national CPA firm. I was auditing
banks mostly, and it just wasn't you know, that interesting
to me?
Speaker 4 (07:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (07:15):
So I was think going back to school for psychology actually,
and some friends of mine heard about this and they said, well,
you know, while you're playing a graduate school, maybe you
could do our accounting and bookkeeping and so forth. And
I was like, I like a degree of bust college
and accounting. I don't about book keeping. But I talked
to some of their mentors, their CPA and another guy
(07:36):
who was the president of a pretty well established consulting firm,
and the oh, you could really learn something. You know,
business is kind of is doing well. So I went
to work for this little startup and that was making
transparent rainbows. That was their biggest job. And one thing
led to the next. We grew really fast. We were
(07:58):
actually became an ink fast. This growing up your company
and I kind of grew into being the CEO and
CFO in my twenties and we got to a certain
point of growing this business. We had no idea what
we were doing well. Organizationally, you know, product wise, we
were great. Sales we were great, and so we hired
a consultant and this guy helped us make so much
(08:21):
change in a few months that I was really inspired
by that, and that's what I want to do. So
that's so I went to business school.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
I had a little similar experience in that I'd seen
consultants at work and I'm thinking, well, these guys get
paid pretty well. I know they work hard, they're really smart,
but they you know, they're well respected, and very early on,
you know, I thought I didn't think it would ever happen,
but I thought, geez, I'd like to do that, and it,
you know, eventually did.
Speaker 4 (08:47):
But I get you.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
I get you totally all right from the NBA experience.
So I always like to ask, and I'll ask this
a few times, what was your most important lesson learned
from your MBA education?
Speaker 5 (09:03):
Well, it was an interesting education. So I've been in
this tiny little business. Yeah, and uh, suddenly I was
with you know, really like very high high performers and
investment banking, which honestly, I didn't even know what that was.
Speaker 4 (09:21):
That's when you invest in a bank, right right.
Speaker 5 (09:23):
Exactly, And so you know that was a bit of
a humbling experience, you know, being with high performers, a
lot from IVY League, which wasn't really my background, you know,
and uh so it was a great uh learning about
like how big corporations work, honestly because hard bhiscal it's
(09:45):
a big class, a class. Oh, it's just being there.
It's like being a large.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
Corporation with a lot of other high performers. As you said,
all right, so just a little bit of a walk
through career just because I've got a couple of questions.
PwC large consultancy. You sold and led delivery of organizational development,
it says, talk a bit about what you took away
(10:12):
from that experience. Again, PwC is like one of the
you know, arguably top three call it what you want
in consultancy, but really smart, really smart people, good performers.
What would you say about that experience?
Speaker 5 (10:25):
Yeah, so I did a number of things there. I
started in the strategy strategic planning group and the business
process re engineering, so you know, helping companies become more efficient.
Then of course you need to you know, it's part
of implementing those things. You need to be able to
understand organizational design and development, and I actually learned how
(10:51):
to write it there.
Speaker 4 (10:52):
Oh interesting, interesting, Yeah.
Speaker 5 (10:55):
We actually hired a woman, Barbara Minto. I still remember.
She was the first female professional employee at Mackenzy Wow.
And she actually developed their writing and how to present,
how to write for presentations. And it was a great,
great learning actually, And because what we would do is
(11:21):
strategy consults in particular, we'd go out for like three
months and just do all this research. We would have
so much data and then we would have to distill
it down for presentation for the executives of the client.
It's honestly, at first I didn't even know where to start.
And imagine she taught this method of like what are
your top seven messages? Right, and then I kind of
(11:45):
learned to like trust my gut, like just write out
like what you thought the executives needed to hear in
seven bullets. And it actually cut through so much of
like going through all the materials and thinking where do
we start of them? So I just start at the
simplest high level because you could always fill in the details, right,
(12:10):
and we had tons of details. We had tons of data,
tons of anecdotes, you know, tons of charts, but so
it really helped me sort of trust my gut about, oh,
I know what the story is. I've been immersing the
data for three months. I don't need to try to
share it all at once. There's a lot of sequence,
and it was a great way to work with the
team too, because you know, we'd all have different somewhere,
(12:33):
different perspectives, and so we could get in a room
and sort of debate what that storyline was. Then once
that was agreed upon, then we could kind of delegate. Okay,
you do you know the first part of the deck
you did the ability of the underwork.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
Were those presentations led by an executive? Were they led
by the team.
Speaker 5 (12:53):
So in the consulting world, it's kind of an interesting arrangement.
It's it's a fairly merit it's mostly a meritocracy, so
that pretty much while you're putting these materials together, any voice,
no matter what level, is welcome to be heard. But
(13:14):
then when you go to the client, you know, typically
the senior partner leads off intro and then who's ever
running the project they lead the presentation. Usually that's how
it goes because you know the data, the partner knows
the highlights.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
Right, let's see, do you want to touch on CSC
index or palladium. I do want to get to fidelity,
But do you want to touch on either of those
maybe some key lessons?
Speaker 5 (13:40):
Yeah, sure. So while I was still it was actually
the Cooper's side of PwC. Prior to Man, I had
started in strategy, as I said Kevin, and you know,
the Japanese were kind of kicking our butts with total
quality and actually coming up with high quality products at
a lower costs. And so a lot of the work
(14:04):
switched to helping organizations catch up, if you will, and
really be able to satisfy their customers better but out
of lower costs. So Cooper's had really been leading the
way in that area in their manufacturing practice. These guys
had gone to Japan and seeing what they were doing
at Toyota and Honda and so forth, and I worked
(14:26):
with them on some strategy projects that they became implementation
projects at big companies like AT and T. And then
I actually led an effort to translate those learnings to
white collar environments. So I did some of the first
business re engineering projects for the mutual fund industry. Actually
(14:47):
the back offices of Putnam Mutual Funds, Failing Investments, an
ad agency that was really fascinating in Detroit. One of
their clients was Chevrolet, which they'd had before General Motors existed,
so this was like one hundred year customer potential. But
they also had smaller clients and they didn't quite understand
(15:10):
why the approach with Chevy wasn't working, you know, with
other clients. And so, you know, I had a blast
like applying those kind of principles to these white collar,
more service oriented environments. And they did things like literally
like knockdown walls, you know, so people could all work
together and things like that. It's very fun. So doing
(15:33):
that work, I got recruited to CSC Index because they
were really the pioneer in business process or engineering that
Michael Hammer, you know, worked with them. He wrote the
original articles and our Business Review and for MIT Review
and so forth. New York Times. I landed New York
Times as a client for them for the New York office,
(15:55):
and then I got recruited to it was then called
it was part of before it was acquired by Palladium.
It was the Balance Scorecard Collaborative was one of their
names that they ran under and these were the guys
(16:16):
who really had invented the balance scorecard concept. So Kaplan
and the Heart Business School of Norton, who was really
kind of a groundbreaker and originally like one of the
first IT strategy guys, and they had come up with
this concept because on that kind of re engineer when
re engineering was the rage, you know, people who were
(16:38):
gathering all this operational data, they kind of didn't know
what to do with all of it. And so Kaplin
norm put together this concept which on the faces it's
fairly simple, which is, if you want to get great
financial results, you need to get satisfy your customers. If
you want to satisfy your customers, you need processes that
work really well. If you want processes that work really well,
(16:58):
need the people with the right skills as to the
right information. Well, that concept, if you then say okay,
what are the goals for those four areas and then
how are we going to measure success, turn out to
be hugely powerful for a successful strategy execution. So, for example,
one of their early clients was Mobile Oil and they
helped Mobile Oil swing from a negative cash flow of
(17:20):
a half billion dollars to a positive cash flow of
a half billion to agow in two years.
Speaker 4 (17:26):
Two years.
Speaker 5 (17:27):
Yeah, now they had a new strategy and so forth,
but this is what drove the implementation of it. So
I use those I learned those principles with Kaplin and
Norton and applied them in other industries.
Speaker 4 (17:39):
All right, we're going to take our first break right here.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
We'll be back everybody with Timothy Swartz in about one minute.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
You're listening to Winning Business Radio with Kevin Helene on
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Speaker 2 (18:38):
And now back to Winning Business Radio with Kevin Helene,
presenting exciting topics and expert guests with one goal in
mind to help you succeed in business. Here once again,
it's Kevin Helene.
Speaker 4 (18:58):
We are back with Timothy Sword.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
Uh, and I'm going to ask you, so, while you're
doing this, while you're you're working in corporate world, were
you starting to identify some of the areas that need
the work that you're doing now? I mean, did you
see any of that.
Speaker 4 (19:15):
At that time?
Speaker 3 (19:18):
What do you mean by mindfulness, you know, executive development,
et cetera.
Speaker 5 (19:24):
Yeah, great question. Yeah, thanks, so, yeah, of course, you know,
I had We hadn't really talked about this, but I started.
I taught myself how to meditate from a book when
I was fifteen years old.
Speaker 4 (19:37):
I was going to ask that that's interesting.
Speaker 5 (19:39):
Yeah, because despite being smart, or maybe somewhat because I
was too cocky, I had done okay in school without
studying that hard. But that didn't really work in math class,
and I was a very avid reader. So I had
somehow tripped across the thing called meditation that you could
(20:02):
do to calm your mind and feel less anxious. And
so I started practicing that literally in math class, like breathing.
I literally breathed my way through tenth grade math. And
I also did other things, you know, I went for
extra help, you know, studied at night things like that,
but it was super helpful. And then later in early college,
(20:27):
I started doing trendsidental meditation every day twice a day
for twenty minutes. And it was really amazed at like
the states of mind you could.
Speaker 3 (20:35):
And you were in Boston. You weren't even in San
Francisco at the time.
Speaker 5 (20:37):
Yeah. Actually, yeah, well in New York I grew up.
Speaker 4 (20:39):
There was a little humor there.
Speaker 5 (20:41):
Yeah, no, it's really true. And so I can talk
more about that if you want to. We can talk
about that later.
Speaker 4 (20:52):
Yeah, we'll add that in in just a few minutes.
Speaker 5 (20:54):
Great, But yeah, what happened was after I was spent
six years at Fideli Investments leading business transformation projects, was
at a strategy for their broker's division, which is all
their retail distribution plus back office platforms for retail brokers
(21:17):
like that are at banks and so forth. Then I
went out on my own and I was mostly I
was doing consulting, mostly focused on strategy execution, as I
was talking about a little bit earlier, but I was
working really like shoulders shoulder with the leadership teams, showing
them how to create strategy figure out strategy, show them
how to execute. So they really owned it. I wasn't
(21:39):
going off and doing researchs and coming back with a
study that.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
Might have noticed I noticed you started that in three ish. Yeah,
and Union Bank comes after that, right, right, right?
Speaker 4 (21:49):
Yeah? Yeah.
Speaker 5 (21:50):
So while I was working with these leaders, they then
started to ask me to coach them, and I kind
of sort of knew what that was, but not really.
So that's when I went to school at night for
two years at a graduate school of psychology, well in
James University, Yeah, then called the Massachusetts Professional School Psychology.
Speaker 4 (22:14):
Actually, yeah, right, I'm familiar with it.
Speaker 5 (22:16):
A great Yeah. So mostly they graduated PhDs in sids,
but they had started this executive coaching program, so really
grounded in, you know, a pretty rigorous approach, seeing a
lot of three sixty assessments and other kinds of assessments
that have real data on people's behavior and how they're
being perceived versus how they're perceiving themselves. So yeah, I
(22:37):
certainly started to see that in the people I was
working with.
Speaker 4 (22:43):
When and why not? When? When was.
Speaker 3 (22:47):
All right, so talk about your consulting practice, and then
I'm going to ask you when and why you you
started transition to mindfulness, to a mindfulness practice.
Speaker 4 (22:57):
Talk about the work that you did at T short, gotcha.
Speaker 5 (23:01):
Yeah, So I was doing a lot of strategy execution
work and this range the clients range from like little
tiny nonprofits you never heard of, to literally like the
Global fifty you know of goals Land Research, which makes
the equipment and make chips like intell right would be
there in the video review.
Speaker 3 (23:22):
So these would be executives, senior leaders, maybe up and
coming leaders and managers.
Speaker 5 (23:26):
That's right. Yeah, So I was doing well when I
was doing the strategy chution work that was with the
leadership team either a company or a division. And I
was certified as a coach by then, so I was
also doing coaching and so I did that kind of doing,
(23:49):
having my feet in both the consulting and the coaching camps,
if you will. And then about fifteen years ago, people
started to ask me to teach mindfulness classes in corporate settings,
Like they heard I was doing this thing and they
were curious about it, and it was becoming more in
the press.
Speaker 4 (24:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
I mean when you first, at least my experience, when
you first hear it seems kind of out there. But
then when you start to understand it. That's why I
want to have you on. When people start to understand it, it
really is so beneficial.
Speaker 5 (24:22):
Yeah, no, I mean just to jump to the present
for a second. So there was an article recently in
the Harvard Business Review, just like the bastion of capitalist media.
Right on the title was something like self awareness is
more important to a CEO's success in running his company
or her company than an NBA. And this was a
(24:45):
research base article. And so, my, you know, and why
is that true? So self awareness is like the foundation
of emotional intelligence, right, and mindfulness is all about awareness,
self awareness and awareness of how you're impacting others. Right. So,
(25:09):
so I'd been practicing mindfuls a long time. It was
born in the press. People were curious about it wasn't
didn't sound as crazy as when I first started, like
went off and did a ten day center treat like
that sounds like you're out of your mind.
Speaker 4 (25:21):
Yeah, in are in Mexico or something, right, Yeah.
Speaker 5 (25:26):
So I started teaching in very corporate environments, like for
the Young President's Organization, for the National Association of Corporate Directors,
for the Private Directors Association, and then for nonprofits for
asset management firms. And then when I was recruited to
Union Bank after I moved to San Francisco, the head
(25:49):
of HR and I had met and she was had
some background of mindfulness and she asked me to help
her roll it out across the bank. So we created
a national program for the bank.
Speaker 3 (25:58):
All right, pause right there, let me ask what did
she identify she did, You've probably validated it, But what
did she identify as the needs that mindfulness would be
the solution for?
Speaker 5 (26:10):
Right, got it? So, I mean her personal experience which
she shared. I'm not telling any stories because she had
breast cancer. Wow, And she went to the mail clinic
and part of her treatment was a mindfulness based stress
reduction program that was developed by this guy, John Cabotzen,
who I actually know very well. Used to live down
(26:31):
the street for me, I think in Massachusetts, and he
created his program after getting his PhD in microbiology at MIT. Right,
So he's not a wu wu kind of guy. Yeah,
And now that program has rolled out probably hospitals all
over the world. But so she understood that how much
mindfulness can help your emotional health, and how your emotional
(26:55):
health healths everything else. Right, And so if you're or
an executive, there's many things you can react to in
a day. Right, there's a lot of stresses thrown at you.
Speaker 4 (27:08):
It's internal and external, right.
Speaker 5 (27:10):
That's right, that's right, And most of the external ones
you can't control, but you can control how you respond
to them, and mindfulness kind of summon up the benefit.
For one of the big benefits is that if you
think about some external stimulus coming into your awareness and
(27:37):
then at some point you respond to that, the mindfulness
creates like an internal mental space, a bigger space of
holding that stimulus and considering how you're going to respond
to it. So instead of reacting, you respond if you will,
so you can. When you react into things, it's often
(28:01):
from like the fight or flight responds right, fear based
often and you're the executive function of your brain just
isn't like in year that much, so you're often making
poor decisions. Like I'm sure everyone can relate to this
(28:22):
in corporate America, which is, you know, have you ever
gotten an email that you responded to and you know
you probably copy twenty people and you do it right away,
and you know it was irritating when you got it,
and then you were like, oh my god, why did
I send that email? Right? And that could either be
a little problem or a big problem.
Speaker 3 (28:42):
I have about a thirty second pause, I use the
outlook function to delay the sin.
Speaker 5 (28:48):
Oh nice, yeah, yeah, because that's often the old Yeah.
Often fifteen or thirty second is all you need. So
it helps create a bigger space for when those you
like come in that could be upsetting. You're more calm,
Like it's not even like you have to recover, like,
you're just more calm to begin with. And so you're
(29:09):
coming from a wiser and hopefully more compassionate place.
Speaker 3 (29:14):
All right, we're gonna take our second break, second and
final break right now, and we will be back in
one more minute.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
You're listening to Winning Business Radio with Kevin Helene on
W four CY Radio. That's W four cy dot com.
Don't go away. More helpful information is coming right up
right here on Winning Business Radio.
Speaker 7 (29:41):
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(30:02):
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Speaker 2 (30:15):
And now back to Winning Business Radio with Kevin Helene,
presenting exciting topics and expert guests with one goal in
mind to help you succeed in business. Here once again
is Kevin Helena.
Speaker 3 (30:34):
We're back with Timothy Swords of Mindful Leadership Executive Coaching.
So you may just have but I want the audience.
I want the audience to be clear what exactly is mindfulness?
Speaker 5 (30:47):
Mindfulness is I mean, you can define it a few
different ways. One is like a state of mind if
you will, where you're aware. I mean, it's fundamentally awareness,
but most of us are like either thinking about something
in the past or planning something in the future, and
(31:11):
mostly unconsciously. We're not really truly in the moment fully aware.
It's because we've been conditioned but through you know, millions
of years of evolution to be like, oh my god,
what we need to be on an alert.
Speaker 3 (31:22):
Of the threats and also this fallacy of multitasking even
though it seems real.
Speaker 5 (31:27):
That's right, yeah, exactly, so, So mindfulness is it's an awareness,
but I would call it like a lucid awareness where
there's not a lot of judgment going on. You're just
seeing things really as they are, so and there's an
(31:50):
agency to it. It's not just just like passive I'm
just going to accept whatever is coming along. It's really
seeing things clearly so we can respond to them wisely and.
Speaker 4 (32:01):
Compassionately or object more objectively, less emotionally.
Speaker 5 (32:05):
Yes, exactly. Yeah. So one of the characteristics of what
I would call a mindful leader is they're not taking
things so personally right, so they can respond more objectively.
As you were saying, that's right.
Speaker 3 (32:20):
So it's actually interesting. I didn't make the parallel, and
I'm just learning like the audiences are. But we actually
when in coaching salespeople, we help them become self aware.
We use assessments like you do, and we measure for
the amount of emotional involvement they have because that impacts
negatively they're selling often interesting well, their response right to objections,
(32:45):
lack of responsiveness, et cetera.
Speaker 4 (32:47):
You know, so interesting, that makes sense, that makes total sense.
Speaker 3 (32:50):
So there's a there's a science of how the brain
is rewired. I read, and that's according to not just you,
but Harvard Medical and Mass General and others. So talk
about how the brain is actually rewired.
Speaker 5 (33:04):
Yeah, so yeah, no, there's thousands of research projects and
articles that have been done now for the last forty
or fifty years. So, I mean one of the main
things is that when we're in this fight or flight
mode or amigdalist so called hijacked. So because we're either
(33:30):
like ready to fight, you know, or a frozen or
a more modern day, we might be like you know,
you know, fidgeting. But when where that worked up? Literally,
as I mentioned a little earlier, the executive function of
brain is not working. The logical part of our brain
(33:52):
is not working. And so literally the practice of mindfulness
what it is is when you're meditating, is your thoughts
and emotions will keep coming up. Of course, it's not
like your mind stops. The idea isn't to stop thinking,
but to be aware of those thoughts and emotions. And
(34:13):
so you can be aware of upsetting thoughts and emotions
or other thoughts and emotions from this mindful place, and
you can actually label them like oh, anger, anger, or
anxious anxious or joy joy right, And by engaging sort
of both sides of the brain, if you will, actually
(34:35):
calming the amignal up down, and if you do this enough,
you restructure the brain permanently so it just doesn't get
upset as much. So quick anecdote, I had a personally
upsetting career thing happened to me in fidelity. I had
an opportunity to meditate for a month, which I did
at a retreat center, and I was pretty upset. So like,
(34:57):
and you're meditating like ten twelve, fourteen hours day, there's
a lot of opportunity to label anger anger. After those
four weeks, I was never so upset about anything again
in my life, Like I can't get off that still. Ye, yeah,
but I'm sure my brain structure changed.
Speaker 3 (35:18):
So what does a practical daily routine look like? Actually,
let me ask that A and B. Sure, what does
it look like for you? And what would it look
like for someone starting out?
Speaker 5 (35:30):
Yeah? No, those are great questions. So I'd say there's
two parts of the daily routine for me. When is
the formal meditation practice, which I first thing in the
morning for forty minutes and then during the day. You know,
there's very practical applications of mindfulness or opportunities to practice, right.
(35:51):
So I also walk for a mile before I do
any work in the morning, and I try to be
more aware of my surrounding then my so like feeling
my feet on there on the ground as they as
they take each step, and that's just like bringing myself
back to the present, like a little practice. And I'm
hearing the birds singing, I'm seeing the beautiful flowers. You know,
(36:12):
I've been really enjoying it. It's not right, it's not
a chore. I'm having a great time being aware of
you know, the world and the earth and all the beauty.
Speaker 3 (36:21):
And you're not on your phone almost tripping over the sidewalk,
and you're not listening to a podcast right.
Speaker 5 (36:26):
Not usually and those are all good too, but ye,
and I mean, it's a funny thing I was. I
was noticing my mind a couple of days ago when
I was taking my little morning walk. As I got
within maybe three minutes from my house, I realized I'd
taken the keys out of my pocket. Now I don't
need us for another three minutes. Yeah, my mind is
(36:49):
already in the future, right, And I just laughed at myself.
I'm like, what are you doing? Like I do that
a lot be here at this moment, you know, because
you know, if you're not in this moment for like
mundane things, then you're missing like being with your children, right,
you're being enjoying your wife or your husband or you know,
I hike a lot. So the beauty of a beautiful
(37:11):
views like so for me, it's not just a way
to be more effective, right, it's also a way to
be happier.
Speaker 3 (37:23):
Let's see some of the areas in which you please,
oh yes, please please.
Speaker 5 (37:27):
So for people who are starting out.
Speaker 4 (37:30):
Oh yes, sorry, I wanted to.
Speaker 5 (37:31):
Mention that you don't need to sit forty minutes a
day to benefit. There's been more recent research because a
lot of the original research were on people who are
sitting meditating a lodge and you know all these great benefits.
But more recent reachar shows that if you do it's
just like twenty minutes a day, but every day, you
(37:52):
can get great benefits, like probably better than ninety five
percent of people. And that applies to more than mindfulness.
This applies that anything in.
Speaker 4 (38:00):
Life do you recommend morning doesn't matter?
Speaker 5 (38:07):
I mean in the scheme of things. Yeah, in theory
it doesn't matter. I say for me, and I think
for a lot of people, it's hard to just pull
out of the activities of the day.
Speaker 4 (38:18):
Yeah, so the.
Speaker 5 (38:19):
Mornings for me the easiest because nothing is started again.
So I'm not pulling myself back. But all you know, right,
but as long as you know, maybe right before dinner
could work, or you know, I wouldn't do it right
before you go to sleep because then you're tired, you
probably will go to sleep unless you want help going
to sleep.
Speaker 3 (38:36):
You know. Then I actually have a very short breathing
routine and I do to help me go to sleep.
Speaker 4 (38:40):
And it's fool proof. I mean, I'm telling you, it's
just that it's that really quick.
Speaker 3 (38:45):
Uh, some of people know what I mean by four
seven eighth, Right, it's just it's quick.
Speaker 4 (38:50):
It's easy, and I swear.
Speaker 3 (38:51):
But yeah, but some of the problems that you help
people overcome could be worried, could be self doubt, could
be burnout. Yeah, on the anxiety. There's so much anxiety today, right,
are some of the go ahead, some of the other challenges.
Speaker 5 (39:07):
People and you know, in lots of different areas of challenges.
So maybe they're and I'll give you a couple of
examples to but maybe they're too emotionally reactive, right, or
maybe they're recently promoted and they just need leadership skills, right,
because you know, organizators have gotten flatter and flatters a
lot of people getting from over they've been individual contributors
(39:28):
and their organizations aren't giving them great management training or
any So that's another area.
Speaker 4 (39:35):
Might be.
Speaker 5 (39:37):
People with imposter syndrome or like anxiety, or just there's
so much uncertainty right now, so how do you deal
with that? Right? Mergers, restructuring, you.
Speaker 4 (39:48):
Know, tariffs, tariffs. Yeah, but a couple of.
Speaker 5 (39:52):
Quick case examples. So I was coaching CFO publicly health firm,
and he had kind of come up through investment, banking
and so forth. So he kind of been a lone wolf.
He didn't really know like the nuances of corporate life,
if you will. So he's a brilliant guy. He'd actually
(40:13):
grown up very kind of blue collars. Mom wasn't around.
She was building a business. She could feed the kids.
But he got himself into you know Ivy League school
on a scholarship, a brilliant guy, but he was a
scary guy in the room because he was coming across
so intensely, and he was a good he wasn't like
a mean guy.
Speaker 4 (40:29):
But yeah, yeah, he had these blinds.
Speaker 5 (40:32):
Out about the impact he was having. So what I
called a gap between intention and impact was pretty big
for this guy. So we actually did a lot of
mindfulness training which really helped his self awareness. And so
when we got the three sixty feedback and literally people
said you're scary, he got it. And then he was
(40:52):
became aware of, oh, what am I doing and what's
behind what I'm doing, which was a lot of anxiety actually,
so he was able to ground himself, Like I talked
about my feet on the ground ice walking. So for
him I recommended try noticing your feet, the feeling that
the sensations of your feet on the ground or on
(41:12):
the floor in a meeting, which he would do at
the beginning of a meeting, and that would calm him down.
Then he'd be like, oh, I can respond without being
so intest right.
Speaker 3 (41:27):
This is a not an easy question. To keep it
as easy as you can. I mean, you could spend
as much time talking about as you want. But how
do you teach emotional intelligence?
Speaker 5 (41:38):
Ah, that's a great question. Well, the first thing I do.
I do assessments, and I do a variety of assessments.
Some are on like all sorts of leadership skills. Some
are particularly around emotional intelligence. There's twelve competencies within emotional
intelligence or emotional social intelligence, which is it's awareness of yourself,
(42:02):
management of yourself. I'll give you the big four. Okay, awareness,
self management, which is your emotions, managing your emotions, and
then it's social awareness being aware of other people, and
then social management, right, relationship measurement, how you manage the liships. Right,
So how do you teach it? So first you I
would do an assessment and say, you know these twelve
(42:23):
competencies within those four big areas, Like one might be
so what is positivity? Actually that's one of the one
of the competencies. So you know, if someone's like a CFO,
they can easily focus on the downside risk to every decision, right,
worry right by worry and the training and you know,
(42:47):
risk avoidance management, but they might get in the way
of what's the positive potential return? Right of an opportunity.
So you know, I'm teaching very practical skills, right, I'm
not teaching something.
Speaker 4 (43:06):
Esoteric, right.
Speaker 5 (43:07):
You know, So let's say the CFO is Joe, So
Joe like, Okay, I get there's this downside risk, but
think about the positive outcomes also, and like make sure
you're asking people about those and understanding those, and you know,
if you're part of leaving the strategy, then talk about
(43:28):
those as much as the downside risks, right, don't just
keep talking about the dispector. And then that applies to
how they talk to their investors too, for a public
health firm. So the way I mean, I sort of
worked from the inside out a lot, if you will,
like what's driving your behaviors, but at the end of
the day, it's a behavior that's observable, so we focus
(43:49):
on what are those observable behaviors.
Speaker 3 (43:58):
This was a really interesting guy. I think it was
your quote. The business world requires. If it wasn't, you
can give credit, but the business world requires a level
of toughness to succeed. The reality is that even in
the C suite, where human beings with thoughts, feelings, and
personal lives that can impact how you perform and lead.
To me, I'm I'm thinking of, Yes, it takes a
toughness and you know, a drive. And I also think
(44:20):
of you know, Jim Collins level five leader, and that's
the opposite of drive, it's really not. But so how
do you balance that toughness with that we just talked
about I'll use the word sensitivity awareness.
Speaker 5 (44:33):
Yeah, yeah, no, that's a that's a great question. So
you have to make tough decisions of business, right, you
have to hopefully optimize the you know, the best solution
for the shareholders as well as your other stakeholders, right,
your employees, your customers, right, and so forth. So sometimes
(44:55):
those are tough trade offs. But how do you I mean,
even let's take a you know, a pretty tough situation
where you're there's a layoff, right, So now you're affecting
a lot of people's lives. You know they've lost you know,
big source of income. But how do you deliver that message? Right?
(45:19):
That makes a big difference actually to not only people
who are leaving, but the people who are left right,
the people who you've retained. So there's actually a very
interesting article just came out this week. I saw it
on Bloomberg through a Kkar, big private equity firm, and
they're very data driven about their results, you can imagine.
So they actually did a whole big study along with
(45:40):
someone from Stanford University on the value of empathy on
the bottom line, and I actually posted about it on
LinkedIn because there's been articles over the years about you know,
how important empathy is, you know, if you go with
a Harbord Business Review or other journals like that. This
is one of the first I've seen it. It was their
data driven, so they'll have examples of like people coming
(46:04):
in and having to lay people off, and how you
deliver that message makes all the difference on how motivated
the people are who stay, and also how the people
feel who are leaving and what they feel about the firm,
and you know what they might say about the firm
going to wherever they're going, right, So, yeah, I think
you need to be tough mind in terms of you know,
(46:26):
at the end of the day, decisions are tough sometimes,
but how you approach those and communicate around those, you know,
will make all the difference in terms of employee engagement
and employee retention, and of course employee engagement as I'm
sure you know, impacts customer satisfaction often time.
Speaker 4 (46:44):
Absolutely. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (46:45):
The biggest layoff that I was adjacent to it was
a client and they went through a series of reductions
in force, and to his credit, the CEO was extremely
empathetic you know, I mean, had to make the decision him.
He made the tough call, right, they were investors. But
(47:07):
by and large, the people that were laid off appreciated.
Speaker 4 (47:10):
Him, right.
Speaker 3 (47:11):
They weren't mad. I mean, yeah, there might have been
one or two, but in general, they were appreciative. They
were they wished him well. They never spoke badly of
the company as they were leaving, even those that were
out of work for a bit, you know, most of
them that I can see of landing on their feet.
This was a couple of years ago. But I credit
him for that. I don't know if he's been through this,
(47:33):
you know this understanding, but I do credit him with that,
with that degree of compassion. All right, talk about we
just have a couple of minutes. Talk about the offerings.
So you work with executives, you work with with executive teams,
talk about your various offerings.
Speaker 5 (47:47):
Sure, yeah, So I work with individuals from kind of
mid level to the c suite leandership effectiveness. I also,
particularly these days, they're interested in helping people in career transition.
There's a lot of that going on right now. And
what I found, a lot of times people going through
(48:07):
career transitions are also dealing with difficult things in their
home life, so they really a lot can really benefit
from the support of a coach kind of particularly someone
like myself and not saying I'm the only person does this,
but kind of works inside out right as well. And
then I also work with leadership teams. It's done a
fair amount of the leadership team development. And then underlying
(48:31):
all those things are assessments. So I can also do
standalone assessments for people in just knowing where they are
and you know where their strengthen one of their challenges.
Speaker 4 (48:41):
That they at the individual level as well as a
team level.
Speaker 5 (48:43):
Imagine I actually, yeah, I actually assessments at both levels.
And then I also teach my friends and I also
see so I'm actually giving some webinars on how to
be common turbulent times.
Speaker 3 (48:55):
Well, last question I'll point out for the audience. Tim
Timothy's information is in the crawl. It will be in
a moment. Who should reach out to you from these
audiences listening and viewing audiences and why so?
Speaker 5 (49:10):
I mean, I'm often contacted by either board members who
want help for their CEO, or the members of the
c suite that certainly the c suite, either for themselves
or their teams or heads of HR of course, and
anyone you know seeking to improve their leadership capabilities.
Speaker 3 (49:32):
Excellent, listen, tim Timothy, thank you so much for being here.
I appreciate it. I know you're busy and I value
your time, and I'm sure the audience got get some
good value out of this as well.
Speaker 4 (49:44):
Great.
Speaker 5 (49:45):
Yeah, thanks for having me. I really appreciate your great questions.
Speaker 3 (49:47):
Kevin, no problem, I'll see you soon, and thanks everybody
for watching and listening. As always, this is a show
about business and business challenges. Often, if you've got concerns
about the sales effectiveness of your company, whether your sales
team as you or very smaller, it's very large, or
anywhere in between, feel free to reach out to me,
and that's on LinkedIn or Facebook. At Winning Business Radio
(50:08):
you can drop me a note. One of my many
email addresses is Kevin at Winning Businessradio dot com. Our
company is Winning Incorporated. We're part of Sandler Training. We
developed sales teams into high achievers and sales leaders into
true coaches and mentors. Listen, We're not right for everybody,
but hey, maybe we should have a conversation. Thank you
as always to producer and engineer Onan for another job
(50:29):
well done.
Speaker 4 (50:30):
Thank you one.
Speaker 3 (50:30):
Be sure to join us next Monday, Monday May fifth,
when my guests will be entrepreneur Greg Vetter, author of Undressed,
the unfiltered story of my failed American dream and how
it led to success. Until then, this is Kevin Helenan.
Speaker 2 (50:46):
You've been listening to Winning Business Radio with your host,
Kevin Helena. If you missed any part of this episode,
the podcast is available on Top four Podcasting and iHeartRadio.
For more information and questions, go to the Winning businesessradio
dot com or check us out on social media. Tune
in again next week and every Monday at four pm
Eastern Time to listen live to Winning Business Radio on
(51:09):
W four CY Radio W four cy dot com. Until then,
let's succeed where others have failed and win in business
with Kevin Helenan and Winning Business Radio
The topics and opinions expressed in the following show are
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(00:21):
W FOURCY Radio.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Churchill said, those who fail to learn from history are
condemned to repeat it. Kevin Helenan believes that certainly applies
to business. Welcome to Winning Business Radio here at W
four CY Radio. That's W four cy dot com and
now your host, Kevin Helena.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
Thanks everybody for joining again today. I am Kevin Hallanan
and welcome back to Winning Business TV and Radio on
W four cy dot com. We're streaming live on Talk
four tv dot com. In addition, we're on Facebook, and
that's live on Facebook at Winning Business Radio. And after
the live show, you're going to see us on all
those platforms where you get your favorite podcasts. YouTube, iHeartRadio, Spotify, Apple,
(01:17):
et cetera, et cetera. The mission of Winning Business radio
and TV, as regular viewers and listeners know, is to
offer insights and advice, to help people avoid the mistakes
of others, to learn best practices, the how tos, the
what to's, the what not tos, and to be challenged,
and I believe, hopefully to be inspired by the successes
(01:37):
of others. Those are consultants, coaches, advisors, authors, founders and
owners and entrepreneurs, people with expertise. But interestingly, every virtual
excuse me, virtually every successful person I've ever talked to
has had some form of failure in their lives and careers.
So while we all have to get our knee skin
once in a while, I say it every week. I'm
driven to keep those scrapes from needing major surgery. Let's
(02:00):
endeavor to learn from history so we don't repeat it.
I've spent the better part of my career equipping businesses
to grow from solopreneurs to small and medium sized companies
all the way up to the fortune fifty. I've seen
some of those companies win into varying degrees. I've seen
some fail I've had the opportunity to rub elbows with
some of the highest performing people around and with some
who probably should have found other professions. In my own businesses,
(02:23):
I've had lots of success, but some failures too, and
I like to think I've learned a lot from those experiences.
So yeah, you'll hear from me my opinions and insights,
but more importantly, you're going to hear from experts, coaches, advisors, etc.
And today is no exception. Timothy Sword's executive coach, certified
mindfulness teacher, and principle of Mindful Leadership Executive Coaching.
Speaker 4 (02:44):
Here's his bio.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
Timothy recently transitioned his consultant practice to a new mindfulness
meditation practice. As of twenty twenty four, Timothy is an
executive coach and certified mindfulness teacher as principal of Hello
Mindful Leadership Executive Coaching. He utilizes his decades of experience
as a financial services executive CFO and management consultant with
(03:07):
rigorous mindfulness training, including more than two thousand hours of
meditation practice and study under world renowned teachers including Jack Cornfield,
Sharon Salzburg, Joe cabot Zen, and Trudy Goodman. The end
result is a bespoke, values driven approach that enables executives,
business owners, and senior leaders to cultivate a self awareness,
emotional resilience, and authenticity to lead with clarity and purpose.
(03:32):
Working in person and virtually, Timothy has worked with clients
in the San Francisco Bay area, as well as with
executives in Boston, Chicago, Houston, New York, and Phoenix. Drawing
on his experience as a senior executive with Fidelity Investments, PwC, AN, MUFG,
Union Bank, and consultants to clients including Merck Lam Research
(03:52):
in Cisco, he combines traditional corporate executive coaching methodologies with
scientifically proven mindfulness practice. This highly effective approach helps clients
navigate the complexities of leadership with greater clarity, confidence, and purpose.
Beyond teaching mindfulness meditations and techniques, Timothy touts the science
behind mindfulness and mindfulness practice and helping practitioners make lasting
(04:15):
change both behaviorally in this and in the both behaviorally
excuse me, and in the psychology of one's brain. That
science is backed up and we'll hear about it by
researchers at Harvard Medical School, Mass General Hospital, and numerous
other institutions. Timothy holds a BS in Accounting from Boston College,
a Harvard MBA, and a graduate certificate in Executive Coaching
(04:35):
from William James University. Timothy, Welcome to Winning Business Radio.
Speaker 5 (04:40):
Thank you, Kevin. Great to be here.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
Yeah, it's good to have you. I appreciate it. I
know that you're busy and appreciate you taking some time up.
So a little bit of background. Where'd you grow up?
Speaker 5 (04:49):
I grew up on Long Island, about forty five minute
Shane Rye from Manhattan, Okay.
Speaker 4 (04:56):
And what was it like to grow up there? Was
it rural? Was it city?
Speaker 5 (05:01):
Was it suburb I'm definitely a suburban boy. It was
definitely suburbia. It was fantastic growing up there. It was
about a fifteen minute drive from the Atlantic Ocean. So
swimming and surfing, which is kind of where my little
logo is derived from. You can't stop the waves, but
it can be enjoyed to surf them. And you know,
(05:25):
if you know how to surf the emotions of your
own mind. That's right. We'll get into that a little
bit now. Growing up there was great. It was a
very well resourced public school system. I went to so
you know, I ran track, I played soccer. I played
the French horn. You got all the uniforms.
Speaker 4 (05:43):
Nice, nice.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
I played trumpet and played. I played one year of football,
but I played the trumpet. That was second grade. I
think I still play all right. From there, though, you
made your way to Boston to attend Boston College. What
was behind that decision?
Speaker 5 (06:00):
Well, I had wanted to study accounting, study business. I
had studied a little bit of it before going there.
And I was the first one, at least on my
father's side of family, which is the side of family
and do the best. No one had been in business
(06:20):
for generations. They were ministers and missionaries, maures and so forth.
And when I started sing accounting, it was like this
window into the business world. I had started working when
I was twelve to start saving money for college, and wow,
so I started running my own little business as a kid.
Speaker 4 (06:36):
But what was the business.
Speaker 5 (06:39):
Well, I had a paper route, I had a I
worked at a beach club doing things like that. But
I also wanted a liberal arts education. So that's how
I got to Boston College.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
And the timing is probably doesn't worry as much, But
when did you get your MBM.
Speaker 4 (06:57):
Why did you decide to go do that? Yeah?
Speaker 5 (07:00):
Gotcha. Yeah. So I I was at I graduate BC,
I went into a national CPA firm. I was auditing
banks mostly, and it just wasn't you know, that interesting
to me?
Speaker 4 (07:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (07:15):
So I was think going back to school for psychology actually,
and some friends of mine heard about this and they said, well,
you know, while you're playing a graduate school, maybe you
could do our accounting and bookkeeping and so forth. And
I was like, I like a degree of bust college
and accounting. I don't about book keeping. But I talked
to some of their mentors, their CPA and another guy
(07:36):
who was the president of a pretty well established consulting firm,
and the oh, you could really learn something. You know,
business is kind of is doing well. So I went
to work for this little startup and that was making
transparent rainbows. That was their biggest job. And one thing
led to the next. We grew really fast. We were
(07:58):
actually became an ink fast. This growing up your company
and I kind of grew into being the CEO and
CFO in my twenties and we got to a certain
point of growing this business. We had no idea what
we were doing well. Organizationally, you know, product wise, we
were great. Sales we were great, and so we hired
a consultant and this guy helped us make so much
(08:21):
change in a few months that I was really inspired
by that, and that's what I want to do. So
that's so I went to business school.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
I had a little similar experience in that I'd seen
consultants at work and I'm thinking, well, these guys get
paid pretty well. I know they work hard, they're really smart,
but they you know, they're well respected, and very early on,
you know, I thought I didn't think it would ever happen,
but I thought, geez, I'd like to do that, and it,
you know, eventually did.
Speaker 4 (08:47):
But I get you.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
I get you totally all right from the NBA experience.
So I always like to ask, and I'll ask this
a few times, what was your most important lesson learned
from your MBA education?
Speaker 5 (09:03):
Well, it was an interesting education. So I've been in
this tiny little business. Yeah, and uh, suddenly I was
with you know, really like very high high performers and
investment banking, which honestly, I didn't even know what that was.
Speaker 4 (09:21):
That's when you invest in a bank, right right.
Speaker 5 (09:23):
Exactly, And so you know that was a bit of
a humbling experience, you know, being with high performers, a
lot from IVY League, which wasn't really my background, you know,
and uh so it was a great uh learning about
like how big corporations work, honestly because hard bhiscal it's
(09:45):
a big class, a class. Oh, it's just being there.
It's like being a large.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
Corporation with a lot of other high performers. As you said,
all right, so just a little bit of a walk
through career just because I've got a couple of questions.
PwC large consultancy. You sold and led delivery of organizational development,
it says, talk a bit about what you took away
(10:12):
from that experience. Again, PwC is like one of the
you know, arguably top three call it what you want
in consultancy, but really smart, really smart people, good performers.
What would you say about that experience?
Speaker 5 (10:25):
Yeah, so I did a number of things there. I
started in the strategy strategic planning group and the business
process re engineering, so you know, helping companies become more efficient.
Then of course you need to you know, it's part
of implementing those things. You need to be able to
understand organizational design and development, and I actually learned how
(10:51):
to write it there.
Speaker 4 (10:52):
Oh interesting, interesting, Yeah.
Speaker 5 (10:55):
We actually hired a woman, Barbara Minto. I still remember.
She was the first female professional employee at Mackenzy Wow.
And she actually developed their writing and how to present,
how to write for presentations. And it was a great,
great learning actually, And because what we would do is
(11:21):
strategy consults in particular, we'd go out for like three
months and just do all this research. We would have
so much data and then we would have to distill
it down for presentation for the executives of the client.
It's honestly, at first I didn't even know where to start.
And imagine she taught this method of like what are
your top seven messages? Right, and then I kind of
(11:45):
learned to like trust my gut, like just write out
like what you thought the executives needed to hear in
seven bullets. And it actually cut through so much of
like going through all the materials and thinking where do
we start of them? So I just start at the
simplest high level because you could always fill in the details, right,
(12:10):
and we had tons of details. We had tons of data,
tons of anecdotes, you know, tons of charts, but so
it really helped me sort of trust my gut about, oh,
I know what the story is. I've been immersing the
data for three months. I don't need to try to
share it all at once. There's a lot of sequence,
and it was a great way to work with the
team too, because you know, we'd all have different somewhere,
(12:33):
different perspectives, and so we could get in a room
and sort of debate what that storyline was. Then once
that was agreed upon, then we could kind of delegate. Okay,
you do you know the first part of the deck
you did the ability of the underwork.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
Were those presentations led by an executive? Were they led
by the team.
Speaker 5 (12:53):
So in the consulting world, it's kind of an interesting arrangement.
It's it's a fairly merit it's mostly a meritocracy, so
that pretty much while you're putting these materials together, any voice,
no matter what level, is welcome to be heard. But
(13:14):
then when you go to the client, you know, typically
the senior partner leads off intro and then who's ever
running the project they lead the presentation. Usually that's how
it goes because you know the data, the partner knows
the highlights.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
Right, let's see, do you want to touch on CSC
index or palladium. I do want to get to fidelity,
But do you want to touch on either of those
maybe some key lessons?
Speaker 5 (13:40):
Yeah, sure. So while I was still it was actually
the Cooper's side of PwC. Prior to Man, I had
started in strategy, as I said Kevin, and you know,
the Japanese were kind of kicking our butts with total
quality and actually coming up with high quality products at
a lower costs. And so a lot of the work
(14:04):
switched to helping organizations catch up, if you will, and
really be able to satisfy their customers better but out
of lower costs. So Cooper's had really been leading the
way in that area in their manufacturing practice. These guys
had gone to Japan and seeing what they were doing
at Toyota and Honda and so forth, and I worked
(14:26):
with them on some strategy projects that they became implementation
projects at big companies like AT and T. And then
I actually led an effort to translate those learnings to
white collar environments. So I did some of the first
business re engineering projects for the mutual fund industry. Actually
(14:47):
the back offices of Putnam Mutual Funds, Failing Investments, an
ad agency that was really fascinating in Detroit. One of
their clients was Chevrolet, which they'd had before General Motors existed,
so this was like one hundred year customer potential. But
they also had smaller clients and they didn't quite understand
(15:10):
why the approach with Chevy wasn't working, you know, with
other clients. And so, you know, I had a blast
like applying those kind of principles to these white collar,
more service oriented environments. And they did things like literally
like knockdown walls, you know, so people could all work
together and things like that. It's very fun. So doing
(15:33):
that work, I got recruited to CSC Index because they
were really the pioneer in business process or engineering that
Michael Hammer, you know, worked with them. He wrote the
original articles and our Business Review and for MIT Review
and so forth. New York Times. I landed New York
Times as a client for them for the New York office,
(15:55):
and then I got recruited to it was then called
it was part of before it was acquired by Palladium.
It was the Balance Scorecard Collaborative was one of their
names that they ran under and these were the guys
(16:16):
who really had invented the balance scorecard concept. So Kaplan
and the Heart Business School of Norton, who was really
kind of a groundbreaker and originally like one of the
first IT strategy guys, and they had come up with
this concept because on that kind of re engineer when
re engineering was the rage, you know, people who were
(16:38):
gathering all this operational data, they kind of didn't know
what to do with all of it. And so Kaplin
norm put together this concept which on the faces it's
fairly simple, which is, if you want to get great
financial results, you need to get satisfy your customers. If
you want to satisfy your customers, you need processes that
work really well. If you want processes that work really well,
(16:58):
need the people with the right skills as to the
right information. Well, that concept, if you then say okay,
what are the goals for those four areas and then
how are we going to measure success, turn out to
be hugely powerful for a successful strategy execution. So, for example,
one of their early clients was Mobile Oil and they
helped Mobile Oil swing from a negative cash flow of
(17:20):
a half billion dollars to a positive cash flow of
a half billion to agow in two years.
Speaker 4 (17:26):
Two years.
Speaker 5 (17:27):
Yeah, now they had a new strategy and so forth,
but this is what drove the implementation of it. So
I use those I learned those principles with Kaplin and
Norton and applied them in other industries.
Speaker 4 (17:39):
All right, we're going to take our first break right here.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
We'll be back everybody with Timothy Swartz in about one minute.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
You're listening to Winning Business Radio with Kevin Helene on
W four CY Radio. That's W four cy dot com.
Don't go away. More helpful information is coming right up
right here on Winning Business Radio.
Speaker 6 (18:06):
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Speaker 2 (18:38):
And now back to Winning Business Radio with Kevin Helene,
presenting exciting topics and expert guests with one goal in
mind to help you succeed in business. Here once again,
it's Kevin Helene.
Speaker 4 (18:58):
We are back with Timothy Sword.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
Uh, and I'm going to ask you, so, while you're
doing this, while you're you're working in corporate world, were
you starting to identify some of the areas that need
the work that you're doing now? I mean, did you
see any of that.
Speaker 4 (19:15):
At that time?
Speaker 3 (19:18):
What do you mean by mindfulness, you know, executive development,
et cetera.
Speaker 5 (19:24):
Yeah, great question. Yeah, thanks, so, yeah, of course, you know,
I had We hadn't really talked about this, but I started.
I taught myself how to meditate from a book when
I was fifteen years old.
Speaker 4 (19:37):
I was going to ask that that's interesting.
Speaker 5 (19:39):
Yeah, because despite being smart, or maybe somewhat because I
was too cocky, I had done okay in school without
studying that hard. But that didn't really work in math class,
and I was a very avid reader. So I had
somehow tripped across the thing called meditation that you could
(20:02):
do to calm your mind and feel less anxious. And
so I started practicing that literally in math class, like breathing.
I literally breathed my way through tenth grade math. And
I also did other things, you know, I went for
extra help, you know, studied at night things like that,
but it was super helpful. And then later in early college,
(20:27):
I started doing trendsidental meditation every day twice a day
for twenty minutes. And it was really amazed at like
the states of mind you could.
Speaker 3 (20:35):
And you were in Boston. You weren't even in San
Francisco at the time.
Speaker 5 (20:37):
Yeah. Actually, yeah, well in New York I grew up.
Speaker 4 (20:39):
There was a little humor there.
Speaker 5 (20:41):
Yeah, no, it's really true. And so I can talk
more about that if you want to. We can talk
about that later.
Speaker 4 (20:52):
Yeah, we'll add that in in just a few minutes.
Speaker 5 (20:54):
Great, But yeah, what happened was after I was spent
six years at Fideli Investments leading business transformation projects, was
at a strategy for their broker's division, which is all
their retail distribution plus back office platforms for retail brokers
(21:17):
like that are at banks and so forth. Then I
went out on my own and I was mostly I
was doing consulting, mostly focused on strategy execution, as I
was talking about a little bit earlier, but I was
working really like shoulders shoulder with the leadership teams, showing
them how to create strategy figure out strategy, show them
how to execute. So they really owned it. I wasn't
(21:39):
going off and doing researchs and coming back with a
study that.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
Might have noticed I noticed you started that in three ish. Yeah,
and Union Bank comes after that, right, right, right?
Speaker 4 (21:49):
Yeah? Yeah.
Speaker 5 (21:50):
So while I was working with these leaders, they then
started to ask me to coach them, and I kind
of sort of knew what that was, but not really.
So that's when I went to school at night for
two years at a graduate school of psychology, well in
James University, Yeah, then called the Massachusetts Professional School Psychology.
Speaker 4 (22:14):
Actually, yeah, right, I'm familiar with it.
Speaker 5 (22:16):
A great Yeah. So mostly they graduated PhDs in sids,
but they had started this executive coaching program, so really
grounded in, you know, a pretty rigorous approach, seeing a
lot of three sixty assessments and other kinds of assessments
that have real data on people's behavior and how they're
being perceived versus how they're perceiving themselves. So yeah, I
(22:37):
certainly started to see that in the people I was
working with.
Speaker 4 (22:43):
When and why not? When? When was.
Speaker 3 (22:47):
All right, so talk about your consulting practice, and then
I'm going to ask you when and why you you
started transition to mindfulness, to a mindfulness practice.
Speaker 4 (22:57):
Talk about the work that you did at T short, gotcha.
Speaker 5 (23:01):
Yeah, So I was doing a lot of strategy execution
work and this range the clients range from like little
tiny nonprofits you never heard of, to literally like the
Global fifty you know of goals Land Research, which makes
the equipment and make chips like intell right would be
there in the video review.
Speaker 3 (23:22):
So these would be executives, senior leaders, maybe up and
coming leaders and managers.
Speaker 5 (23:26):
That's right. Yeah, So I was doing well when I
was doing the strategy chution work that was with the
leadership team either a company or a division. And I
was certified as a coach by then, so I was
also doing coaching and so I did that kind of doing,
(23:49):
having my feet in both the consulting and the coaching camps,
if you will. And then about fifteen years ago, people
started to ask me to teach mindfulness classes in corporate settings,
Like they heard I was doing this thing and they
were curious about it, and it was becoming more in
the press.
Speaker 4 (24:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
I mean when you first, at least my experience, when
you first hear it seems kind of out there. But
then when you start to understand it. That's why I
want to have you on. When people start to understand it, it
really is so beneficial.
Speaker 5 (24:22):
Yeah, no, I mean just to jump to the present
for a second. So there was an article recently in
the Harvard Business Review, just like the bastion of capitalist media.
Right on the title was something like self awareness is
more important to a CEO's success in running his company
or her company than an NBA. And this was a
(24:45):
research base article. And so, my, you know, and why
is that true? So self awareness is like the foundation
of emotional intelligence, right, and mindfulness is all about awareness,
self awareness and awareness of how you're impacting others. Right. So,
(25:09):
so I'd been practicing mindfuls a long time. It was
born in the press. People were curious about it wasn't
didn't sound as crazy as when I first started, like
went off and did a ten day center treat like
that sounds like you're out of your mind.
Speaker 4 (25:21):
Yeah, in are in Mexico or something, right, Yeah.
Speaker 5 (25:26):
So I started teaching in very corporate environments, like for
the Young President's Organization, for the National Association of Corporate Directors,
for the Private Directors Association, and then for nonprofits for
asset management firms. And then when I was recruited to
Union Bank after I moved to San Francisco, the head
(25:49):
of HR and I had met and she was had
some background of mindfulness and she asked me to help
her roll it out across the bank. So we created
a national program for the bank.
Speaker 3 (25:58):
All right, pause right there, let me ask what did
she identify she did, You've probably validated it, But what
did she identify as the needs that mindfulness would be
the solution for?
Speaker 5 (26:10):
Right, got it? So, I mean her personal experience which
she shared. I'm not telling any stories because she had
breast cancer. Wow, And she went to the mail clinic
and part of her treatment was a mindfulness based stress
reduction program that was developed by this guy, John Cabotzen,
who I actually know very well. Used to live down
(26:31):
the street for me, I think in Massachusetts, and he
created his program after getting his PhD in microbiology at MIT. Right,
So he's not a wu wu kind of guy. Yeah,
And now that program has rolled out probably hospitals all
over the world. But so she understood that how much
mindfulness can help your emotional health, and how your emotional
(26:55):
health healths everything else. Right, And so if you're or
an executive, there's many things you can react to in
a day. Right, there's a lot of stresses thrown at you.
Speaker 4 (27:08):
It's internal and external, right.
Speaker 5 (27:10):
That's right, that's right, And most of the external ones
you can't control, but you can control how you respond
to them, and mindfulness kind of summon up the benefit.
For one of the big benefits is that if you
think about some external stimulus coming into your awareness and
(27:37):
then at some point you respond to that, the mindfulness
creates like an internal mental space, a bigger space of
holding that stimulus and considering how you're going to respond
to it. So instead of reacting, you respond if you will,
so you can. When you react into things, it's often
(28:01):
from like the fight or flight responds right, fear based
often and you're the executive function of your brain just
isn't like in year that much, so you're often making
poor decisions. Like I'm sure everyone can relate to this
(28:22):
in corporate America, which is, you know, have you ever
gotten an email that you responded to and you know
you probably copy twenty people and you do it right away,
and you know it was irritating when you got it,
and then you were like, oh my god, why did
I send that email? Right? And that could either be
a little problem or a big problem.
Speaker 3 (28:42):
I have about a thirty second pause, I use the
outlook function to delay the sin.
Speaker 5 (28:48):
Oh nice, yeah, yeah, because that's often the old Yeah.
Often fifteen or thirty second is all you need. So
it helps create a bigger space for when those you
like come in that could be upsetting. You're more calm,
Like it's not even like you have to recover, like,
you're just more calm to begin with. And so you're
(29:09):
coming from a wiser and hopefully more compassionate place.
Speaker 3 (29:14):
All right, we're gonna take our second break, second and
final break right now, and we will be back in
one more minute.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
You're listening to Winning Business Radio with Kevin Helene on
W four CY Radio. That's W four cy dot com.
Don't go away. More helpful information is coming right up
right here on Winning Business Radio.
Speaker 7 (29:41):
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Speaker 2 (30:15):
And now back to Winning Business Radio with Kevin Helene,
presenting exciting topics and expert guests with one goal in
mind to help you succeed in business. Here once again
is Kevin Helena.
Speaker 3 (30:34):
We're back with Timothy Swords of Mindful Leadership Executive Coaching.
So you may just have but I want the audience.
I want the audience to be clear what exactly is mindfulness?
Speaker 5 (30:47):
Mindfulness is I mean, you can define it a few
different ways. One is like a state of mind if
you will, where you're aware. I mean, it's fundamentally awareness,
but most of us are like either thinking about something
in the past or planning something in the future, and
(31:11):
mostly unconsciously. We're not really truly in the moment fully aware.
It's because we've been conditioned but through you know, millions
of years of evolution to be like, oh my god,
what we need to be on an alert.
Speaker 3 (31:22):
Of the threats and also this fallacy of multitasking even
though it seems real.
Speaker 5 (31:27):
That's right, yeah, exactly, so, So mindfulness is it's an awareness,
but I would call it like a lucid awareness where
there's not a lot of judgment going on. You're just
seeing things really as they are, so and there's an
(31:50):
agency to it. It's not just just like passive I'm
just going to accept whatever is coming along. It's really
seeing things clearly so we can respond to them wisely and.
Speaker 4 (32:01):
Compassionately or object more objectively, less emotionally.
Speaker 5 (32:05):
Yes, exactly. Yeah. So one of the characteristics of what
I would call a mindful leader is they're not taking
things so personally right, so they can respond more objectively.
As you were saying, that's right.
Speaker 3 (32:20):
So it's actually interesting. I didn't make the parallel, and
I'm just learning like the audiences are. But we actually
when in coaching salespeople, we help them become self aware.
We use assessments like you do, and we measure for
the amount of emotional involvement they have because that impacts
negatively they're selling often interesting well, their response right to objections,
(32:45):
lack of responsiveness, et cetera.
Speaker 4 (32:47):
You know, so interesting, that makes sense, that makes total sense.
Speaker 3 (32:50):
So there's a there's a science of how the brain
is rewired. I read, and that's according to not just you,
but Harvard Medical and Mass General and others. So talk
about how the brain is actually rewired.
Speaker 5 (33:04):
Yeah, so yeah, no, there's thousands of research projects and
articles that have been done now for the last forty
or fifty years. So, I mean one of the main
things is that when we're in this fight or flight
mode or amigdalist so called hijacked. So because we're either
(33:30):
like ready to fight, you know, or a frozen or
a more modern day, we might be like you know,
you know, fidgeting. But when where that worked up? Literally,
as I mentioned a little earlier, the executive function of
brain is not working. The logical part of our brain
(33:52):
is not working. And so literally the practice of mindfulness
what it is is when you're meditating, is your thoughts
and emotions will keep coming up. Of course, it's not
like your mind stops. The idea isn't to stop thinking,
but to be aware of those thoughts and emotions. And
(34:13):
so you can be aware of upsetting thoughts and emotions
or other thoughts and emotions from this mindful place, and
you can actually label them like oh, anger, anger, or
anxious anxious or joy joy right, And by engaging sort
of both sides of the brain, if you will, actually
(34:35):
calming the amignal up down, and if you do this enough,
you restructure the brain permanently so it just doesn't get
upset as much. So quick anecdote, I had a personally
upsetting career thing happened to me in fidelity. I had
an opportunity to meditate for a month, which I did
at a retreat center, and I was pretty upset. So like,
(34:57):
and you're meditating like ten twelve, fourteen hours day, there's
a lot of opportunity to label anger anger. After those
four weeks, I was never so upset about anything again
in my life, Like I can't get off that still. Ye, yeah,
but I'm sure my brain structure changed.
Speaker 3 (35:18):
So what does a practical daily routine look like? Actually,
let me ask that A and B. Sure, what does
it look like for you? And what would it look
like for someone starting out?
Speaker 5 (35:30):
Yeah? No, those are great questions. So I'd say there's
two parts of the daily routine for me. When is
the formal meditation practice, which I first thing in the
morning for forty minutes and then during the day. You know,
there's very practical applications of mindfulness or opportunities to practice, right.
(35:51):
So I also walk for a mile before I do
any work in the morning, and I try to be
more aware of my surrounding then my so like feeling
my feet on there on the ground as they as
they take each step, and that's just like bringing myself
back to the present, like a little practice. And I'm
hearing the birds singing, I'm seeing the beautiful flowers. You know,
(36:12):
I've been really enjoying it. It's not right, it's not
a chore. I'm having a great time being aware of
you know, the world and the earth and all the beauty.
Speaker 3 (36:21):
And you're not on your phone almost tripping over the sidewalk,
and you're not listening to a podcast right.
Speaker 5 (36:26):
Not usually and those are all good too, but ye,
and I mean, it's a funny thing I was. I
was noticing my mind a couple of days ago when
I was taking my little morning walk. As I got
within maybe three minutes from my house, I realized I'd
taken the keys out of my pocket. Now I don't
need us for another three minutes. Yeah, my mind is
(36:49):
already in the future, right, And I just laughed at myself.
I'm like, what are you doing? Like I do that
a lot be here at this moment, you know, because
you know, if you're not in this moment for like
mundane things, then you're missing like being with your children, right,
you're being enjoying your wife or your husband or you know,
I hike a lot. So the beauty of a beautiful
(37:11):
views like so for me, it's not just a way
to be more effective, right, it's also a way to
be happier.
Speaker 3 (37:23):
Let's see some of the areas in which you please,
oh yes, please please.
Speaker 5 (37:27):
So for people who are starting out.
Speaker 4 (37:30):
Oh yes, sorry, I wanted to.
Speaker 5 (37:31):
Mention that you don't need to sit forty minutes a
day to benefit. There's been more recent research because a
lot of the original research were on people who are
sitting meditating a lodge and you know all these great benefits.
But more recent reachar shows that if you do it's
just like twenty minutes a day, but every day, you
(37:52):
can get great benefits, like probably better than ninety five
percent of people. And that applies to more than mindfulness.
This applies that anything in.
Speaker 4 (38:00):
Life do you recommend morning doesn't matter?
Speaker 5 (38:07):
I mean in the scheme of things. Yeah, in theory
it doesn't matter. I say for me, and I think
for a lot of people, it's hard to just pull
out of the activities of the day.
Speaker 4 (38:18):
Yeah, so the.
Speaker 5 (38:19):
Mornings for me the easiest because nothing is started again.
So I'm not pulling myself back. But all you know, right,
but as long as you know, maybe right before dinner
could work, or you know, I wouldn't do it right
before you go to sleep because then you're tired, you
probably will go to sleep unless you want help going
to sleep.
Speaker 3 (38:36):
You know. Then I actually have a very short breathing
routine and I do to help me go to sleep.
Speaker 4 (38:40):
And it's fool proof. I mean, I'm telling you, it's
just that it's that really quick.
Speaker 3 (38:45):
Uh, some of people know what I mean by four
seven eighth, Right, it's just it's quick.
Speaker 4 (38:50):
It's easy, and I swear.
Speaker 3 (38:51):
But yeah, but some of the problems that you help
people overcome could be worried, could be self doubt, could
be burnout. Yeah, on the anxiety. There's so much anxiety today, right,
are some of the go ahead, some of the other challenges.
Speaker 5 (39:07):
People and you know, in lots of different areas of challenges.
So maybe they're and I'll give you a couple of
examples to but maybe they're too emotionally reactive, right, or
maybe they're recently promoted and they just need leadership skills, right,
because you know, organizators have gotten flatter and flatters a
lot of people getting from over they've been individual contributors
(39:28):
and their organizations aren't giving them great management training or
any So that's another area.
Speaker 4 (39:35):
Might be.
Speaker 5 (39:37):
People with imposter syndrome or like anxiety, or just there's
so much uncertainty right now, so how do you deal
with that? Right? Mergers, restructuring, you.
Speaker 4 (39:48):
Know, tariffs, tariffs. Yeah, but a couple of.
Speaker 5 (39:52):
Quick case examples. So I was coaching CFO publicly health firm,
and he had kind of come up through investment, banking
and so forth. So he kind of been a lone wolf.
He didn't really know like the nuances of corporate life,
if you will. So he's a brilliant guy. He'd actually
(40:13):
grown up very kind of blue collars. Mom wasn't around.
She was building a business. She could feed the kids.
But he got himself into you know Ivy League school
on a scholarship, a brilliant guy, but he was a
scary guy in the room because he was coming across
so intensely, and he was a good he wasn't like
a mean guy.
Speaker 4 (40:29):
But yeah, yeah, he had these blinds.
Speaker 5 (40:32):
Out about the impact he was having. So what I
called a gap between intention and impact was pretty big
for this guy. So we actually did a lot of
mindfulness training which really helped his self awareness. And so
when we got the three sixty feedback and literally people
said you're scary, he got it. And then he was
(40:52):
became aware of, oh, what am I doing and what's
behind what I'm doing, which was a lot of anxiety actually,
so he was able to ground himself, Like I talked
about my feet on the ground ice walking. So for
him I recommended try noticing your feet, the feeling that
the sensations of your feet on the ground or on
(41:12):
the floor in a meeting, which he would do at
the beginning of a meeting, and that would calm him down.
Then he'd be like, oh, I can respond without being
so intest right.
Speaker 3 (41:27):
This is a not an easy question. To keep it
as easy as you can. I mean, you could spend
as much time talking about as you want. But how
do you teach emotional intelligence?
Speaker 5 (41:38):
Ah, that's a great question. Well, the first thing I do.
I do assessments, and I do a variety of assessments.
Some are on like all sorts of leadership skills. Some
are particularly around emotional intelligence. There's twelve competencies within emotional
intelligence or emotional social intelligence, which is it's awareness of yourself,
(42:02):
management of yourself. I'll give you the big four. Okay, awareness,
self management, which is your emotions, managing your emotions, and
then it's social awareness being aware of other people, and
then social management, right, relationship measurement, how you manage the liships. Right,
So how do you teach it? So first you I
would do an assessment and say, you know these twelve
(42:23):
competencies within those four big areas, Like one might be
so what is positivity? Actually that's one of the one
of the competencies. So you know, if someone's like a CFO,
they can easily focus on the downside risk to every decision, right,
worry right by worry and the training and you know,
(42:47):
risk avoidance management, but they might get in the way
of what's the positive potential return? Right of an opportunity.
So you know, I'm teaching very practical skills, right, I'm
not teaching something.
Speaker 4 (43:06):
Esoteric, right.
Speaker 5 (43:07):
You know, So let's say the CFO is Joe, So
Joe like, Okay, I get there's this downside risk, but
think about the positive outcomes also, and like make sure
you're asking people about those and understanding those, and you know,
if you're part of leaving the strategy, then talk about
(43:28):
those as much as the downside risks, right, don't just
keep talking about the dispector. And then that applies to
how they talk to their investors too, for a public
health firm. So the way I mean, I sort of
worked from the inside out a lot, if you will,
like what's driving your behaviors, but at the end of
the day, it's a behavior that's observable, so we focus
(43:49):
on what are those observable behaviors.
Speaker 3 (43:58):
This was a really interesting guy. I think it was
your quote. The business world requires. If it wasn't, you
can give credit, but the business world requires a level
of toughness to succeed. The reality is that even in
the C suite, where human beings with thoughts, feelings, and
personal lives that can impact how you perform and lead.
To me, I'm I'm thinking of, Yes, it takes a
toughness and you know, a drive. And I also think
(44:20):
of you know, Jim Collins level five leader, and that's
the opposite of drive, it's really not. But so how
do you balance that toughness with that we just talked
about I'll use the word sensitivity awareness.
Speaker 5 (44:33):
Yeah, yeah, no, that's a that's a great question. So
you have to make tough decisions of business, right, you
have to hopefully optimize the you know, the best solution
for the shareholders as well as your other stakeholders, right,
your employees, your customers, right, and so forth. So sometimes
(44:55):
those are tough trade offs. But how do you I mean,
even let's take a you know, a pretty tough situation
where you're there's a layoff, right, So now you're affecting
a lot of people's lives. You know they've lost you know,
big source of income. But how do you deliver that message? Right?
(45:19):
That makes a big difference actually to not only people
who are leaving, but the people who are left right,
the people who you've retained. So there's actually a very
interesting article just came out this week. I saw it
on Bloomberg through a Kkar, big private equity firm, and
they're very data driven about their results, you can imagine.
So they actually did a whole big study along with
(45:40):
someone from Stanford University on the value of empathy on
the bottom line, and I actually posted about it on
LinkedIn because there's been articles over the years about you know,
how important empathy is, you know, if you go with
a Harbord Business Review or other journals like that. This
is one of the first I've seen it. It was their
data driven, so they'll have examples of like people coming
(46:04):
in and having to lay people off, and how you
deliver that message makes all the difference on how motivated
the people are who stay, and also how the people
feel who are leaving and what they feel about the firm,
and you know what they might say about the firm
going to wherever they're going, right, So, yeah, I think
you need to be tough mind in terms of you know,
(46:26):
at the end of the day, decisions are tough sometimes,
but how you approach those and communicate around those, you know,
will make all the difference in terms of employee engagement
and employee retention, and of course employee engagement as I'm
sure you know, impacts customer satisfaction often time.
Speaker 4 (46:44):
Absolutely. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (46:45):
The biggest layoff that I was adjacent to it was
a client and they went through a series of reductions
in force, and to his credit, the CEO was extremely
empathetic you know, I mean, had to make the decision him.
He made the tough call, right, they were investors. But
(47:07):
by and large, the people that were laid off appreciated.
Speaker 4 (47:10):
Him, right.
Speaker 3 (47:11):
They weren't mad. I mean, yeah, there might have been
one or two, but in general, they were appreciative. They
were they wished him well. They never spoke badly of
the company as they were leaving, even those that were
out of work for a bit, you know, most of
them that I can see of landing on their feet.
This was a couple of years ago. But I credit
him for that. I don't know if he's been through this,
(47:33):
you know this understanding, but I do credit him with that,
with that degree of compassion. All right, talk about we
just have a couple of minutes. Talk about the offerings.
So you work with executives, you work with with executive teams,
talk about your various offerings.
Speaker 5 (47:47):
Sure, yeah, So I work with individuals from kind of
mid level to the c suite leandership effectiveness. I also,
particularly these days, they're interested in helping people in career transition.
There's a lot of that going on right now. And
what I found, a lot of times people going through
(48:07):
career transitions are also dealing with difficult things in their
home life, so they really a lot can really benefit
from the support of a coach kind of particularly someone
like myself and not saying I'm the only person does this,
but kind of works inside out right as well. And
then I also work with leadership teams. It's done a
fair amount of the leadership team development. And then underlying
(48:31):
all those things are assessments. So I can also do
standalone assessments for people in just knowing where they are
and you know where their strengthen one of their challenges.
Speaker 4 (48:41):
That they at the individual level as well as a
team level.
Speaker 5 (48:43):
Imagine I actually, yeah, I actually assessments at both levels.
And then I also teach my friends and I also
see so I'm actually giving some webinars on how to
be common turbulent times.
Speaker 3 (48:55):
Well, last question I'll point out for the audience. Tim
Timothy's information is in the crawl. It will be in
a moment. Who should reach out to you from these
audiences listening and viewing audiences and why so?
Speaker 5 (49:10):
I mean, I'm often contacted by either board members who
want help for their CEO, or the members of the
c suite that certainly the c suite, either for themselves
or their teams or heads of HR of course, and
anyone you know seeking to improve their leadership capabilities.
Speaker 3 (49:32):
Excellent, listen, tim Timothy, thank you so much for being here.
I appreciate it. I know you're busy and I value
your time, and I'm sure the audience got get some
good value out of this as well.
Speaker 4 (49:44):
Great.
Speaker 5 (49:45):
Yeah, thanks for having me. I really appreciate your great questions.
Speaker 3 (49:47):
Kevin, no problem, I'll see you soon, and thanks everybody
for watching and listening. As always, this is a show
about business and business challenges. Often, if you've got concerns
about the sales effectiveness of your company, whether your sales
team as you or very smaller, it's very large, or
anywhere in between, feel free to reach out to me,
and that's on LinkedIn or Facebook. At Winning Business Radio
(50:08):
you can drop me a note. One of my many
email addresses is Kevin at Winning Businessradio dot com. Our
company is Winning Incorporated. We're part of Sandler Training. We
developed sales teams into high achievers and sales leaders into
true coaches and mentors. Listen, We're not right for everybody,
but hey, maybe we should have a conversation. Thank you
as always to producer and engineer Onan for another job
(50:29):
well done.
Speaker 4 (50:30):
Thank you one.
Speaker 3 (50:30):
Be sure to join us next Monday, Monday May fifth,
when my guests will be entrepreneur Greg Vetter, author of Undressed,
the unfiltered story of my failed American dream and how
it led to success. Until then, this is Kevin Helenan.
Speaker 2 (50:46):
You've been listening to Winning Business Radio with your host,
Kevin Helena. If you missed any part of this episode,
the podcast is available on Top four Podcasting and iHeartRadio.
For more information and questions, go to the Winning businesessradio
dot com or check us out on social media. Tune
in again next week and every Monday at four pm
Eastern Time to listen live to Winning Business Radio on
(51:09):
W four CY Radio W four cy dot com. Until then,
let's succeed where others have failed and win in business
with Kevin Helenan and Winning Business Radio
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